Ruth Roman: A Career Portrait

223 Pages·2022·12.882 MB·English

by  Derek Sculthorpe

Ruth Roman

Ruth Roman
A Career Portrait
Derek Sculthorpe
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina
Also by Derek Sculthorpe
and from McFarland
Claire Trevor: The Life and Films
of the Queen of Noir (2018)
Edmond O’Brien: Everyman of Film Noir (2018)
Brian Donlevy, the Good Bad Guy:
A Bio-Filmography (2017)
Van Heflin: A Life in Film (2016)
Frontispiece:
Signed photograph sent from Ruth Roman to author’s father, circa 1950
ISBN (print) 9 78-1-4766-8824-4
ISBN (ebook) 9 78-1-4766-4630-5
Library of Congress and British Library
cataloguing data are available
Library of Congress Control Number 2022027107
© 2022 Derek Sculthorpe. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Front cover: Ruth Roman publicity still, circa 1949
Printed in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
Acknowledgments
With grateful thanks to Budd Burton Moss for
his invaluable help and enthusiasm. Thanks also
to Aaron Schmidt at the Boston Public Library.
Thanks as always to my family for their forbear-
ance and encouragement.
v

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments v
Introduction 1
1. The Carnival on the Beach 5
2. Buffeted on Broadway 14
3. Hope Deferred in Hollywood 20
4. Warner Bros. Contract Star 34
5. Strangers on a Train 50
6. Tomorrow Is Another Day 60
7. “The sexiest girl in town” 76
8. Freelance 87
9. The Box in the Corner 107
10. Disaster at Sea 114
11. Triumph on Tour 130
12. “Did you know Rod La Rocque?” 135
13. Whatever Happened to Ruth Roman? 150
14. The Short Goodbye 163
Epilogue 168
Appendix 171
Chapter Notes 191
Bibliography 203
Index 205
vii

Introduction
“I never did the greatest picture in the world.
Maybe you can’t be better than your material, but
you can do a good job. When you start believing in
yourself as a great actress and when you’re looking
for Academy Awards, you’re in trouble, brother.”
—Ruth Roman interviewed, 19541
In many ways, Ruth Roman was “the nearly girl” of 1950s cinema.
She seemingly had everything going for her: she was sexy yet whole-
some, capable yet vulnerable with a good sense of humor. Behind her
were the long years of trying, since the days as a child when she had
dreamed of following in the footsteps of her heroines, such as Bette
Davis. At one time, it all seemed to be falling into place. Voted the Most
Promising Newcomer in 1950 and lauded as the “Sexiest Girl in Hol-
lywood,” she had a string of good roles and was consistently one of the
most popular actresses. After her second marriage fell apart in the mid-
dle of the decade, her career too fell away. Success, as she might have
said in one of her endearing mixed metaphors, was a horse of another
opinion.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s, my dad, like many other young
boys of his generation, used to send away to Hollywood studios for
signed photos of the stars. The dusty side streets of a northern industrial
city in England were thousands of miles away from the glamor capitol of
Hollywood and, metaphorically speaking, the two were light years apart.
The magic of cinema was a great escape for that generation from the
mundanity and drabness of ordinary life, not to mention the privations
of war and the lingering effects of rationing, which did not end until the
mid–1950s. It was always exciting to see the postmarks stamped with
the studio logos from Culver City. Among the many pictures he received
by return of post, only a few were actually handwritten. Of those, only
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